


Thanatophobia

by mcpie



Category: The Magnus Archives
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Fear of Death, Immortality, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:54:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29203185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcpie/pseuds/mcpie
Summary: Jonah Magnus has lived a life of many. Now, he finds himself at the end of it. (SPOILERS FOR 192)
Kudos: 7





	Thanatophobia

Thanatophobia

"JONAH (BACKGROUND)  
-he screams his pitch is low and black at night that flows and chokes his withered throat and hacking cough that sounds like death is here for him who always knew and feared that this indecent end would carve its bitter name full deep inside his soul and burn within without a ceasing seeing moment more than screaming ones who howl and hide from fates that crawl towards on nails that scratch and creak like rotten boards might warn you of your severed pains approach to pull your skin like sodden cloth and drag it tearing from the now that is no longer even close to what the when just might've been if there was time enough to run and hide from rancid death-"  
\-------  
He saw both of his parents enter the carriage, as they so often did, to go off somewhere. Even now it is hard to forget the light in his mother's eyes as she talked about Cambridge. It was beautiful weather out. And it shall be a weekend of rest.  
Only it never ended up being a weekend. Or a day. That morning in February, it was just 1797- his parents died and as they did- he learned what fear was for the very first time. There was a snowstorm that night, the white blanking out any vision of the outside. And he was convinced that whoever, what ever came for them- It was not far from knocking at his door. 

He had been eleven then. Practically adult by regency standards, but desperate to be so much more. His inheritance was gorgeous and exactly what he had needed to advance. To strike. He had seen the workers, their pathetic faces covered in coal, he knew what they smelled like. They reeked of death and blood and dirt and decay. Of fecal matter and disintegrating crawling rot, staggering close to anyone even associated with those streets and working men. He knew he wasn’t one of them.  
So he could never be seen among any of them. 

"Why do you do it?" Mordechai had asked him as they were walking the seemingly grounds of the school. They were in their last semester in Oxford, their younger selves reflecting like shadows off of them. They don't stop following. Nobody seemed to notice. Jonah sighed, remembering the night before, the long conversations they had back in Robert's dorm room. He knew that Mordechai wanted to ask: What are you afraid of? What is making you do this?  
The redheaded man smiled, though it didn't reach his eyes anymore.  
"I need to believe that there is more to this existence than just... sitting. Waiting. Being kept in the dark and then.... dying." He spat out that word with a deep hatred. "Why must one die, Mordechai? *Why must I die?"*

He was an old man now ad it felt like that crawling rot from what was the end of things was stalking him, like rats infesting houses. His wrinkles mapping out his face like scars did, only with any heroics. He was ugly. He was old. God, he hated to look at himself. The day the first of those endless labyrinthine lines of decay entered his face was day all the mirrors vanished from his house. All but one.  
He was an old man now and the only reason for his ongoing life was ambition and devotion to nothing but the Watcher itself. Maybe a spark of foolish hope as well. That what he was doing, what he was planning, wasn’t the end. As his dead, trembling lips speak the words.  
He was an old man now, older than he should’ve been, older than anyone ever was.  
He was an old man now, gazing upon his new youthful features, in a body that wasn’t his, or hadn’t been until now.  
He was an old man and he cheated death. 

\--------  
It had been a countless wheel of repetitions, yet it felt different this time. He escaped Wright the second his hair turned white and the sockets under his eyes started to become prominent, even while he was wearing his half-moon glasses. He escaped Wright to land in the youthful body of Elias Bouchard and finally, after almost two centuries of searching and dying, hopping and discarding, Jonah looked like himself again. His stormy grey eyes that a Lukas once described as a hurricane, finally found their new determination. It was time. 

The typhoon roared inside his chest and the Watcher filled him with warmth as he laid his gaze on Jonathan Sims. Jonah knew that he would be the one, in a way that he knew that it was time.  
*He shall be the king of a ruined world and he shall never die.*

As the world changed and Jonah felt his form electrify. Shivering with satisfaction, he gazed upon his city, his country, *his new world*. The crown found its way on his head, his hands thrown into the air. The exhilaration was not able to be described, not in words. He was finally where he was meant to be. 

Or was he?


End file.
